“In other words, let’s say you walked into a place and there were six personal trainers there—you wanted to lose weight.
There were six personal trainers there, five of them were in shape and one of them was morbidly obese.
Which one of them would you choose?
You’d choose one of the ones that were in shape, wouldn’t you?
Yes, because if the person can’t do it for themselves, how can they help you do it?”
“Success Leaves Clues”
Today I’m going to share with you some clues to success. I want to start off by going over something we discussed last week, which is goal setting. Last Thursday I touched on goal setting and why it’s important. I left off one little statistic that also falls into the clues to success.
Now, let’s begin first by why clues to success are so important. Anthony Robbins has this phrase: He says, “Success leaves clues.”
Then Andrew Carnegie at the turn of the last century, early 1900s, he made this comment: “Stop trying to reinvent the wheel ‘cause it’s all already been done before. Simply go out and find someone who’s gotten the results from their life that you want and imitate them.” In other words, he’s implying that there are clues as well.
And then it comes down to really that point. It’s so hard to build on that phrase ‘cause it’s so perfect. “Stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Simply go out and find someone who’s gotten the results from their life that you want and imitate them.”
Titles, Not Deeds
Now, when people want to get in shape, they go find people who are in shape to teach them how to get in shape. However, when we look at our money, for some reason Americans do not do the same thing. What they do is they go out and they look for titles—not deeds.
In other words, let’s say you walked into a place and there were six personal trainers there—you wanted to lose weight. There were six personal trainers there, five of them were in shape and one of them was morbidly obese. Which one of them would you choose? You’d choose one of the ones that were in shape, wouldn’t you? Yes, because if the person can’t do it for themselves, how can they help you do it? It just makes total sense.
But let’s look at what we’re doing from a financial point of view. Do you go out and analyze the income, the expenses, the investment income of your financial planners? You don’t — come on, be honest. You don’t.
You just went out there, you found somebody with a title, you found somebody with a degree, and you went, “Oh, they’ve got a title. They’ve got a degree. They must have results to go with it.”
Results
People, those titles and degrees do not mean they have any results at all. And you’re out there with financial planners who are “morbidly obese,” if you get the analogy. What Andrew Carnegie said is go find people that have gotten the results from their life that you want and you imitate them.
What’s the key word in there? Does he say “title” or “degrees”? No, he says “results,” deeds. And we go to the next step to make it fit with this, which is: Success leaves clues. What are some major clues to success?
Let’s talk about what we talked about last Thursday: Are written goals really that important? Well, let’s look at the clues to success. They did a study of Harvard graduates finding that of the graduating class— I don’t know what year this was. It was in the ‘50s — of the graduating class only five percent of the graduating class had written, clearly defined goals, 95 percent of the class did not.
Twenty years later they did a survey to find that the five percent who had written, clearly defined goals had more money than the other 95 percent combined. Think about that.
The Whole Shabang
Now, this is harder to assess, but as they were assessing them they also noted that the five percent who had those written-down goals were also happier, more balanced, more squared away and more holistic—meaning they had the whole… what would it be? They had the whole shabang — they had family, the fitness, the relationships, the charity, the legacy, they had it all.
But since that’s really hard to substantiate or whatever, you look to the money and that’s going to tell you too in a capitalist society. The five percent who had the written goals had more assets, more wealth, than the other 95 percent combined. Think about that. So is that a clue for you?
How many of you wrote your goals down between last Thursday and today? And here we are Lifestyles Unlimited giving you—for free—a goal-setting workshop. Listen, if you won’t take a clue like that, what will it take you to take action to start doing these things that successful people do?
Writing Down Goals
Success leaves clues. And the clue you got today is that the people who write down goals are more effective than 95 percent of the population. In fact, it’s really worse than that when you really think about it, but that’s good enough for now.
You’re going to put yourself in the top five percent of the population by writing down your goals. It’s so important. And of course we’ll give you the free goal-setting workshop at LifestylesUnlimited.com. Just click on the Free Starter Kit and get it.
Doing What You Love
Let’s look at another clue to success. We talk about this: You’ve got to be doing what you’re passionate about. Confucius said, “Do what you love. Work at what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Well, let’s look at a group—this is another 20-year survey. I got this from John Maxwell. If you have not listened to him, he is a leadership expert, has some outstanding material. You can find them at JohnMaxwell.com. He’s also in Success Magazine just about every month. He comes on the free CD-ROM that comes with Success Magazine every month.
He talked about a survey where they took 1500 graduating students — 83 percent or 1245 of them — 83 percent of them chose jobs because of their income potential. The idea of this 83 percent of the people was that if they took a job that made enough money, they could always do what they wanted to do later.
Only 17 percent or 255 of the students chose careers that they loved and were passionate about. Again, only 17 percent chose careers that they loved and were passionate about. Twenty years later 101 of those 1500 were millionaires. Of the 101, 100 of them were the students who chose jobs they loved and were passionate about.
Success leaves clues. Is that not a clue? What does it take to motivate yourself to get out there and do what we’re talking about?
